The Science Behind ‘Butterflies in Your Stomach’

Have you ever felt flutters in your stomach before you see someone you like or feel nervous? Many call it having ‘butterflies in your stomach’ but do you know why you feel that tingling sensation? Surely insects aren’t part of the organisms living in your gut. If you think this has to do with your nervous system, you are correct!

The autonomic nervous system, a component of the peripheral nervous system that regulates the body’s involuntary functions like heart rate, respiration, blood pressure and even sexual arousals. The autonomic nervous system can be divided into two main branches, the parasympathetic which promotes the “rest and digest” response and the sympathetic which promotes the “fight or flight” response. Your “fight or flight” response can be traced back to our ancestors who needed the ability to make really quick decisions while being under threat of wild animals and this is what most researchers credit for the butterflies in your stomachs.

When you get nervous or feel danger coming, the body releases adrenaline and cortisol which will increase your heart rate, dilate your airways and pupils, make your breaths heavier and also increase blood flow to your legs and heart which causes blood to move away from the digestive system. This drop in blood flow makes the blood vessels surrounding your stomach and intestines constrict and digestive muscles contract, making you feel squirmy and tense.

Now this brings in another question, why do we feel the same flutters when we are about to jump out of a plane and when your crush asks you out? Unfortunately, our bodies aren’t able to tell the difference between these situations. Considering the fact that for the longest time, reproduction has been the ultimate goal of living, it makes sense that your body feels like it is in an emergency when it sees someone who could potentially be your mate and reproduce with.

To wrap up this article, we could say that this feeling is similar to when your brain sends emotions to our facial muscles, but this time to our brains. The only difference is that somebody can read our facial expressions while nobody can read the emotions in our gut.

References

Mashable. “The Science behind Butterflies | Love 101.” YouTube, 16 June 2017, www.youtube.com/watch?v=95bndlRP_Hc&list=PLg_pvqbNZplejdc6XYF3-kUxUvulc3xbx&index=4. Accessed 13 Aug. 2022.

Mayer, Emeran. “There Is More than Butterflies in Your Stomach.” Psychology Today, 2016, www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/gut-sensations/201608/there-is-more-butterflies-in-your-stomach. Accessed 13 Aug. 2022.

SciShow. “Why Do You Feel Butterflies in Your Stomach?” YouTube, 5 June 2018, www.youtube.com/watch?v=r7yp69Ua37E&list=PLg_pvqbNZplejdc6XYF3-kUxUvulc3xbx&index=3. Accessed 13 Aug. 2022.

Waxenbaum, Joshua A, et al. “Anatomy, Autonomic Nervous System.” Nih.gov, StatPearls Publishing, 29 July 2021, www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK539845/#:~:text=The%20autonomic%20nervous%20system%20is,sympathetic%2C%20parasympathetic%2C%20and%20enteric. Accessed 13 Aug. 2022.